Lance Glinn:

Each month on the Inside the ICE House podcast, we engage in insightful conversations with business leaders, CEOs of NYSE listed companies, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. We explore their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and their aspirations to shape the future. You can tune in every week on all major podcast platforms to catch these discussions and watch full video episodes on tv.nyse.com and on the NYSE YouTube channel.

We kicked off the month with episode 511 and Paul Beswick, Chief Information and Operations Officer for NYSE listed Marsh. Marsh is embarking on a major transformation as it unifies its businesses under a single global brand, marking a new era for the 150-year-old firm. Paul goes Inside the ICE House to unpack the strategy behind the rebrand and how it reflects Marsh's ambition to deliver more integrated client-centric solutions.

Paul Beswick:

Well, we're a 150-year-old firm, and there's a huge amount of legacy that's in all of the brands that we've been going to market under over the last number of years. And one of the challenges, of course, is making sure that when we're working with our clients, we're really bringing the best of everything that we can do. And while we do extraordinary work in every one of those companies individually, some of the most ambitious and exciting things we do are the things where we're bringing the ability to collaborate across all of those capabilities together to do things that are even more impactful. We want to make sure that this feels like an integrated set of offerings, even while a lot of the work we do will sit in one or other of the lines of business that we have today. But it's a sign that that's our aspiration to bring more of that to clients in a more ambitious and systematic way.

Lance Glinn:

Episode 512 featured Jay Jackson, CEO of NYSE listed Abacus Global Management. Abacus is entering a new chapter with its move to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ABX. He goes Inside the ICE House to unpack the strategy behind the listing and the rebrand and how Abacus' data-driven, vertically integrated models set it apart.

Jay Jackson:

When I think about '26, what's going to measure that success is the financial planning piece. I think we have been very, very selective as to who we're going to work with there. And it's a build it or buy it. I think we're looking at some great firms that share the same culture and mindset we do. And as we look into '26, filling out that piece of our flywheel is incredibly important to us because from my perspective, financial and estate planning, I wouldn't say is broken, but my gosh, is a massive opportunity. Massive opportunity to educate people just as we highlighted.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Jay Jackson:

Right? If your number one fear is running out of money in retirement or estate planning, wouldn't it make sense to know better how long you're going to be in retirement and applying that data to better understanding how people should allocate it?

Lance Glinn:

To act on it.

Jay Jackson:

Yeah. I'll tell you what is broken. 60/40 is broken. And we're going to provide solutions to do that. And we could not be more excited about some of the things I think we're going to announce in '26 that's going to have a major impact on financial services.

Lance Glinn:

February brought with it the second episode of the first history series on the Inside the ICE House podcast hosted by NYSE archivist Dave D'Onofrio and curator Anna Melo. Alongside Michelle Young of Untapped NYC, the series continues with a focus on pneumatic tubes, the communication system that powered the early days of the New York Stock Exchange.

Michelle Young:

One of the secrets in her book was that mail used to be moved underground in New York City by pneumatic tube. And this blew me away. I'm not born in New York City, but I started coming here and living here when I was a young teenager, so I really thought I knew a lot about New York City. And turns out I did not know about the pneumatic tube mail system. And that's really what got me started creating Untapped New York. It was like, if I didn't know about this wacky historical fact, other people don't know about it. And I kind of became this weird expert on specifically pneumatic tube mail.

Lance Glinn:

Intercontinental Exchange VP of Strategic Initiatives, Michael Blaugrund and NYSE Chief Product Officer Jon Herrick joined episode 513 to discuss the NYSE's development of a 24/7 digital trading venue and how aimed at meeting evolving retail expectations while supporting institutional participation, the platform seeks to pair innovation with the safeguards of traditional market structure.

Michael Blaugrund:

We're really excited to introduce our new trading venue that's going to allow for tokenized equities to trade instantly 24/7 against stablecoins. That's really going to unlock the same type of user experience that they may have come of age experiencing with crypto and other digital assets.

Jon Herrick:

I view this as a starting point. This is a foundation for broker dealers that serve retail investors to begin to build digitally native product in a way that preserves all the things that are important about 100 plus years of markets that have evolved and the regulation that guides them.

Lance Glinn:

The Inside the ICE House History Series continued with its third of four episodes as Dave D'Onofrio, Anna Melo, and now Justin Rivers of Untapped NYC spoke to the geographic evolution of New York City and the critical decisions along the way that shaped the city's rise.

Justin Rivers:

Why would you come right off the ocean and go up the river when you could come right off the ocean, have one of the deepest, best natural harbors in the world, which we have here in Manhattan. And it's actually the third director general, Peter Minuit, who says, "Let's move everything down to the tip of this island in Mannahatta and we'll call it New Amsterdam."

What's interesting is if you go a little bit further back is that the Lenape people who were in this area at the time actually used Manhattan and particularly Lower Manhattan as a seasonal trading ground. So we have a tour that's called the Remnants of Dutch New Amsterdam, which we, in our office, so we don't just say that all the time when we're talking about it on the calendar and staffing, we call it DNA. So what I like to say, and I even tell this on the tour, is that the very DNA, the genetic material of New York was actually laid down by the Lenape who were using it for business purposes.

Lance Glinn:

Phil Rosen joined us for our Monthly Markets in Focus series. In it, he breaks down Bitcoin's sharp pullback and also explores why the Magnificent Seven slump signals a healthier broadening bull market with new opportunities in energy, industrials, and healthcare.

Phil Rosen:

Gold's strength, I think it pretty much sucked all the capital out of Bitcoin because it became a momentum trade.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Phil Rosen:

Instead of its traditional, "Hey, let's buy gold because it's a store of value, protect against inflation." It became, "Holy moly, this asset won't stop going up."

Lance Glinn:

Let's get it now.

Phil Rosen:

Yes, exactly.

Lance Glinn:

So that way we can cash out.

Phil Rosen:

So I think that was a sort of hindrance to Bitcoin's strength in the last year. But again, if you go back to the month before the election, we're right at that point right now. It's about 69, 68,000 per Bitcoin. So a lot of people point to that and say, "This is a failed store of value." I don't think that's correct because it's still up thousands and thousands of percent over the last decade. It's pretty much still outperforming every single asset class. And if you expand the timeline, you can say, "Look, this asset's gone up and down. It's very volatile." But over a, let's say, multi-year span, it's still outperforming almost everything else.

Lance Glinn:

Closing out the month of February with episode 514, we were joined by Keelan Adamson, CEO of NYSE listed Transocean. Leading the offshore drilling industry, he goes Inside the ICE House to discuss the company's intense capabilities, massive assets, and the commitment employees take to ensure the safety and wellbeing of themselves, as well as those around them.

Keelan Adamson:

Drilling is a bit of art and a bit of science. It takes a huge amount of experience to be good at it, which is where I think the biggest strength of Transocean is. Our equipment is first class and I think differentiated across our peer group. But it's really about the people and the type of people that we have, the culture that we generate as a result of that.

So as a crew, look at myself, I had bunches of crews and people that I work with that I remain in contact with today, we all ... It's not unique. Actually, a lot of the management team have actually worked on rigs. So we really connect with each other offshore. I think there's a degree of responsibility and accountability. The closest analogy I can give you is probably sports, team sports, like football. Everybody has a role and you have to perform your role in order for the entire operation to be successful.

Lance Glinn:

You can listen to these episodes along with all past and future Inside the ICE House episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Remember that we also have ETF Central podcast episodes that release every two weeks on Wednesdays and the Market Storylines podcast that releases every Friday. Full video episodes of all our podcasts are also available on tv.nyse.com and on the NYSE YouTube channel. Be sure to join us every week for conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 10:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House.

Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.